10 Free things to do with kids in Toledo

Although summer is coming to end, there is still time to make summer memories! I want to share with you some FREE events you can still enjoy with your kids this summer. Whether you live in or near Toledo, Ohio hold on to this post for fun activities to with kids.

 1.Movie Nights at  Hensville !

Pilkington presents Fleetwood's Movie night. Owens Corning outdoor concert stage in Hensiville park is transformed into a giant movie screen! Admissions to this event is free for the whole family! You just need to bring lawn chairs or blankets. You can order from Fleetwoods Tap room, or get fresh popcorn and treats!

The next free movie night is Saturday, August 19 at 9:30pm. Movie: Major League 

Fleetwoods is located at 28 N. St Clair Street Toledo, Ohio 43604 

 
2. Fossil Digging at Orlander Park !

The park is made up of 5 acres of rock quarry, where you can dig up actual fossils. The specimens are in soft shale that you can break away with your bare hands. You may bring a brush and container to clean and transport your findings. This event is totally free, and you can take your treasures home!
 Orlander Park is located at 6930 Sylvaina Ave, Sylvaina Ohio

Christian Daycare located 2340 N Holland-SylvainaToledo, OH. Pre-Enrolling 0 to Age 5.

3. Food Court Fridays at Franklin Park Mall! 

 Every Friday this summer, Franklin park mall will present FREE fun activities for families. They will feature interactive games, crafts and presentations from local organizations.

The next free Food Court Friday is  Friday July 28 from 11am to 1pm. 

Franklin Park mall is located at 5001 Monroe St. Toledo, Ohio 43623 

4. Apple Camp or Kids Hour

 The Apple Store at Franklin Park mall offer 3 day session summer camps, or 1 day 60 minute session. The summer camps offer three different sessions Coding and Programming Robots, Composing music, and creating stories with iMovie.  Kids Hour cover topics Sphero Maze challenge, where you program Sphero robot. Creating music with GrageBand, where children will learn how to make basic song production. Making movies together, kids will make a short movie.

The  next free Kids hour is Saturday August 2, 4:30-5:30pm.  All these events are Free, but pre-registration is required. Visit Today Apple for more details. 

5. Toledo Farmers Market

Every Saturday your family can visit the Farmers.  This is a great opportunity to learn about making healthy food choices, and purchasing locally grown produce. July 29, from 9am to 1pm is Kids Day at the Market.  There will face painting and other fun activities.
The Toledo Farmers Market is located at 525 Market Street, Toledo, Ohio 43604

6. Home Depot DYI workshops

 The Home Depot offer FREE workshops for children once a month. Each session has a different them. The sessions are hands on, children get free kit, apron, and pin!  

The next workshop is wooden Penske truck  on Saturday August 5, from 9am-12pm. Registration is required. Visit Home Depot on 1035 W Alexis Rd Toledo, OH 43612. 

7. Wildwood Playground  

  Children will love a FREE day at the park! Explore Wildwood new playground! Wildwood Park is always free and open to the public. Located at 5100 W. Central, Toledo, Ohio.

  

8. Family Center at the Art Museum  

  The Toledo Art Museum Family center host several family events each week. Each themed activity is FREE, and you and your little ones can create your own memories and masterpieces! Visit this Saturday for At the Sea Shore "Inspired by the many seashore images found in our collection, create your own summertime, sandy, seashore painting using watercolors and collage materials."- TMA Event Description

The next At the Sea Shore Event is July 29, 12pm-5pm. Toledo Museum of Art. 2445 Monroe, Toledo, Ohio 43606

9. Discovery Trails at Toledo Botanical Gardens 

Children and families can discover "playable places" and "playable moments" at The Botanical Gardens. Take stroll around the trail, stop to discover each playable section of the garden. Which includes secret forest, nature lab, pondside meadow, and firefly woods. 

The Botanical Gardens is FREE and open to the public year around. 

10. Visit The Imagination Station 

 Free for kids on Saturday, with paid adult admission. Now they are featuring there Dinosaurs around the world exhibit.

Sign Up for News Letter for updates on Fun Free things to do with your children! Subscribe for our next post on where your children can Eat Free in Toledo, Ohio! 

Top 10 Last Minute Halloween Costumes

It is the day before Halloween, and you have been so busy that you have not had a chance to put together your child's Halloween Costume.  No worries we have your back, here are 10 DIY Halloween costumes that you can put together with items you may have around the house!

1.  An Old Man 

2.  A Transient 

 Source: Pinterest 

3. Cat Lady 

Source: Pinterest 

4.Pete the Cat 

Source: Pinterest 

5. Charlie Brown 

Source: Pinterest 

6. God's Gift to women 

Source: Pinterest 

7. Paper Doll

Source: Pinterest 

8. Rain Cloud 

Source: Pinterest 

9. Charlotte's Webs 

Source: Pinterest 

10. A Bag of Groceries 

Source: Pinterest 

 I hope you find these 10 easy DIY costumes, helpful and fun. Each costume are made with simple materials that you could find around your house or purchase for a really low cost.  You can make Halloween fun even if it is at the last minute!   Help other families with last minute costumes-share, this post

Fall Family Activity The Family Tree

Fall is my one my families favorite time of year. The cool crisp air changing leaves and apple picking the best part of fall. Most of all we like to spend time together and do fun creative activities and crafts. After a family walk at the park we decided to make our very own fall scene.

What your need: 
Paint
paint brush
paint cups (we used coffee filters)
Canvas or poster board
Newspaper (for the mess)

We started with the youngest member of our family. He got to paint his  arm and hand with brown paint. He loved how much it tickled and fun to get all messy.

With a completely paint arm he carefully pressed his arm onto the poster board. The younger they are the more help they may need with this step. You want to be sure it does not smear, so that it looks like a tree.

                             


Next we took turns, one by one making our "tree" prints. Depending on the size of your paper, and number of family members, you want space out your prints to ensure everyone can fit!

One we had all of our tree prints completed, we each painted leaves on the tree with our finger prints. This was so much fun to fill our trees with cool fall colors.  We add sunshine and grass and fallen leaves to the grown.

Each tree was unique and different, like every member in our family.  When we come all together we make a beautiful picture.  This was a  nice family fall activity that we all enjoyed together.

What your child will learn: 

• Sensory 
• Fine Motor skills 
• Colors 
• self-expression through art 
• 
  

For Preschool Teachers and Child Care providers:

This is a great family engagement activity. Invite your families to complete this activity in your classroom. It may not be the whole family but  Mommy/Daddy and child can do this together. 

Try this activity with your family and share with us how it went. Feel free to share your unique pictures. 

Why go to Preschool?

When considering preschool, you should first notice the difference between preschool and daycare. Daycare centers off care options for working parents. Typically centers will accept infants, toddler, and preschool and school age children.  The program will provide basic care, and some educational instructions. Some daycare centers have highly qualified teachers and offer classes as a part of their program.   A preschool offers early childhood instruction for 3 and 4 year old's.  Typically it’s a part day class, with highly qualified degree teachers in early childhood education. These classrooms follow a curriculum and focuses on the child development and getting them ready for kindergarten.  

There is no denying that offering a high quality preschool program will help prepare your child for kindergarten and beyond.   Children who attend high quality preschool typically have better social skills, pre-reading skills, expanded vocabulary, and understanding of basic math skills. Preschool programs focus on 5 area of development,  social emotional development, gross motor, fine motor, language, and cognitive.  The daily activities are planned to strengthen a child in each domain, to help them become ready for kindergarten.  

In preschool your child will build social emotional skills that will help them for school readiness.  Many children enter kindergarten with the needed cognitive skills, but lack social emotional development.  Preschool can help develop your child skills in the following ways

·         Identify emotions in themselves and others

·          Relate to others  in positive ways

·          Manage feelings of anger, frustration and distress when faced with a tough situation, like when another child takes a favorite toy.

·          Builds a love  for  learning and approach it enthusiastically

·         Pay attention, and work both independently and cooperatively in a structured classroom environment.

Preschool can be a wonderful opportunity for exploration, growth, and fun!  You should evaluate your family’s needs to decide what type of program would be best for you and your child.  High quality preschool builds lifelong learners, and helps to build social emotional skills which leads to kindergarten success.

3 Benefits of Playing Pretend

There is researched evidence that play has direct and indirect impact on children's later academic achievement. In early childhood it is important to allow children to explore the world around them with hands on activities, where they can use their language and imagination. When you see little ones "just playing" know that they are busy preparing for their futures.

Reading Skills
 There are studies that have show the effect of play in literacy and phonics awareness. Play even without literary props have enhanced children reading and writing skills, and pretend play have also increased phonics awareness.  When children are playing pretend they use new language, expands there vocabulary, and use the materials around them as symbols that later aids in reading skills.


Communication Skills
Pretend or dramatic play has also helped to to build communication skills, perspective reasoning, negation skills, compromising and cooperation.   During dramatic play children create the opportunity to use complex language and social interactions. 

Math Skills
Children math skills are build through board games, which enhance counting, and games that build problem solving skills. Blocks, sand and water play builds the foundation for logical math thinking and scientific reasoning, as well as cognitive problem solving.


When your child is playing pretend with army men, playing with a kitchen set with a friend or playing a board game, they are busy gaining reading, communication, and math skills that will set them up for success!

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Benefits of Retelling stories through Play

Reading to your child and the retelling the story through play is a great way to get involved in your child's play and build early reading skills.  When retelling a story your child is building their language skills, vocabulary, comprehensions, and communication skills.  For young children you should use props, or dramatic play materials. Using concrete objects help children make direct association with words and the context of the story.

Comprehension

Retelling stories help to build children's comprehension skills  by allowing them to show understanding of people, ideas, and object.  Parents can evaluate their child's ability retell the familiar story. The child can learn to describe parts of story and understand what has been read aloud. Children can demonstrate their interest and understanding of words and  using words in new ways.  They are also sharing their ideas, experiences and expressing thoughts.

Building vocabulary and language skills

With modeling and support children can use the new words that were acquired through their conversations and the story. Children will uncover the meaning of unknown words or concepts by using context clues and prompts through play.  Acting or playing it out helps to identify real life meaning and uses of these new words.

Communication  skills

children learn how to follow typical communication patterns with other, such as listening, taking turns, and speaking about the current topic being discussed.

Cinderella is a classic fairy tale that can be retold in unique ways.  Check out our book store for the high quality durable classic tale of Cinderella.

                                                                     

How to establish Routines

Routines are the habit of doing something in a particular order, a sequence of actions that become so familiar we just do automatically. It is not about the time as much as it is about the process.  Routines help children self-regulate,  it’s a guide as to know what to expect, and helps them to predict what is going to happen next which then gives them a sense of security when those expectations are met.  By establishing family routines it will help your child sleep better, perform better academically, and eliminate stress for the whole family.   The key is to establish a core routine, which is the flow of events on most days. Routines can be established for part of the day or for the entire day, just depending on your family’s needs.

Take things slow when trying to set new routines. Don’t try to change everything at once, you don’t want to overwhelm your family then they will not be successful.  Instead start with one or two things that you will do every day.  For example in establishing a bedtime routine, read a bedtime story in the child’s bedroom every night until it becomes a habit. Then add your next goal, which could be for your family to get their clothes for the next day. You will focus on doing those two things before bed every night until it becomes a habit. The time is not as important as the process, so it is important to do things in the same order or sequence ever night.  Even if your timing is off stick the process and your children will know what to expect.

Just ask yourself the following questions   when setting your routine

• Is it  age appropriate for my child?
• What is my desired outcome?
• Is it simple?

what are some of your challenges in establishing routines with your children?

Check out this cute little video for some bedtime routine inspiration

5 ways to Learn and play with your child

The parent or teacher involved in the child’s play, must first believe that positive play experience are important to a child development. Through adult support children can gain confidence, build cognitive skills, language skills, as well as have an enriched play experience.   Here are 5 ways you can get involved and have an enriching play experiences with your child.

1.Read a story then “act it out” or play it out.  When retelling a story your child is building their language skills, vocabulary, comprehensions, and sequencing skills.  For young children you should use props, or dramatic play materials. Using concrete objects help children make direct association with words and the context of the story.

2.  Create your own story.  Allow your child to unleash their imagination and create their own unique story.  Children can use props, dramatic play materials, or create it in print. The adult role is to follow the child lead, and it important not to influence the story line. In creating print the adult can write what is dictated to them by the child, which help a child understand that words can be written.

                                                

3. You can explore your environment.  Go on a scavenger hunt at home or anywhere.  You can have a child search the area of for certain color objects to learn colors. They can search for letters, numbers, or words. The possibilities are endless and this is an easy and fun activity for most ages.

4. Play a game. Playing a game together creates a secure attachment or bond. It builds grammar and vocabulary skills by simply reading and explaining instructions. Depending on the complexity of the game children can learn practical skills, life lesson, or build cognition skills.

5. Just play. What every toys or materials your child is interested in at the moment, you should can just join them.  You have to follow their lead and allow them to direct the activity, but you can give them undivided attention, support, and have fun!

10 Skills a child Gains through play

Young Children Learn Through Play…

So let’s make every day a day that children can learn, play and grow. Plan time each day to allow children to do what comes naturally, and that is play! Play is when someone is activity engaged in an activity that they are enjoying. Play can happen anytime with anything!!!  Play is not only fun, it is beneficial too!  

Some of the skills your children can learn through play includes

1. Self-Regulation skills
2. Symbolic thought
3. Cognitive thought
4. Negotiation skills
5. Compromise and cooperation skills
6. Communication skills
7. Perspective reasoning
8. Increased Literacy awareness
9. Math Skills
10. social emotional development.